The Fat Lady Is Singing But Trump Refuses To Hear Her

 

Although Twitter hid Trump's 2:22 AM brain fart-- "Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process"-- it isn't hard for anyone to access: "I easily WIN the Presidency of the United States with LEGAL VOTES CAST. The OBSERVERS were not allowed, in any way, shape, or form, to do their job and therefore, votes accepted during this period must be determined to be ILLEGAL VOTES. U.S. Supreme Court should decide!"

This morning Axios' Jonathan Swan was writing that "Senior White House and Trump campaign officials are complaining bitterly about poor internal communication, blaming colleagues, pondering what jobs they might try to get next year, and lashing out at their new enemy: Fox News. Aides told Axios they're dreading the prospect of Fox calling Pennsylvania for Joe Biden, which could make the conservative network the first to give Biden 270 electoral votes. A Trump campaign official said the internal view was that it's essential to keep the race 'optically' alive, and that if Fox were to call it, it would severely harm their efforts to support President Trump's (false) claims that he'd already won."

He reported that, "The incandescent anger at Fox within Trumpworld is hard to overstate." They're still furious that Fox called Arizona for Biden and have been unsuccessfully trying to get Fox to rescind the call ever since. And there was some gallows humor:

A senior administration official said: "When Bush had this issue they tapped arguably the pre-eminent statesman of his generation, James Baker, to spearhead their legal and PR efforts, to great effect. ... We rolled out Rudy Giuliani, Corey Lewandowski and Pam Bondi. You can draw your own conclusions."

Maybe that's because Trump's inner circle has been busy revving up violence. This morning Tony Romm and Isaac Stanley-Becker reported at the Washington Post that last night a Republican campaign firm, OpnSesame, run by Gary Coby, the digital director for Trump’s 2020 campaign, sent unmarked texts urging supporters in Philly area to attack the city's voting counting center:

ALERT: Radical Liberals & Dems are trying to steal this election from Trump! We need YOU! Show your support at the corner of 12th St. & Arch St. in Philadelphia.

Gary Coby wants to take his unfortunate existence out on America

Two two reporters wrote that "The text messages reflect the Trump campaign’s heightened efforts to harness digital channels, and sow distrust about the 2020 election’s results, as Biden approaches the threshold needed to win the race. The campaign has sent millions of emails and texts in recent days that similarly claim without evidence that Democrats are trying to steal the election, including a new blast of text messages late Thursday asking for donations to help Trump initiate legal challenges in key battleground states... The tactics illustrate potential vulnerabilities in the country’s communications systems, exposing the extent to which a wide array of sophisticated actors can use tools, including text messages, to spread falsehoods or stoke fear with little public oversight. Earlier this week, Americans nationwide were bombarded with unidentifiable robocalls telling them to “stay home,” a campaign some feared might deter people from casting their votes. On Election Day, officials in Michigan warned local voters about another slew of robocalls and texts that seemed to discourage voting."

The texts to Philadelphia numbers only instructed people to show up at the site where ballot tabulation was occurring. By baselessly raising the specter of electoral theft, however, they fit a pattern of messaging by the president, his children, top campaign aides and their allies in right-wing media. The rallying cry they settled on was #stopthesteal, which they pushed on Twitter, Facebook and other social media in an effort to spark nationwide street protests over counts that showed Trump trailing Biden.

The efforts, via text and online channels, were aimed specifically at vote-counting centers. A Facebook group called “STOP THE STEAL”-- sponsored by the co-founder of Women for Trump, among others-- promoted a slew of events aimed at delegitimizing the count.

The group gained 360,000 members before Facebook took it offline Thursday. “The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group,” said a Facebook spokesman, Andy Stone.

A few Republicans-- very few-- are beginning to speak up about Trump's tactics and baseless claims of fraud and vote theft. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) said that "If the president’s legal team has real evidence, they need to present it immediately to both the public and the courts. In the meantime, all legal votes need to be counted." Susan Collins (R-ME) went a little further: "States have the authority to determine the specific rules of elections. Every valid vote under a state’s law should be counted. Allegations of irregularities can be adjudicated by the courts. We must all respect the outcome of elections." Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) told Trump to STFU, stop whining and take his complaints to court and demanded he "STOP Spreading debunked misinformation... This is getting insane." Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) spoke for most Americans, regardless of party, when he said said that Trump's bullshit is "very hard to watch" and that his allegations "are just not substantiated."

Unless Alaska flips, this is probably the final 2020 election map

Mitt Romney (R-UT) said Señor Trumpanzee"is wrong to say that the election was rigged, corrupt or stolen-- doing so damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic, and recklessly inflames destruction and dangerous passions."

Miss McConnell doesn't want to get any of the blame if the violent Trumpists start rioting. He tweeted this out early this morning:

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), on the other hand, ever the faithful Trump lapdog, ran to Fox to claim that "Trump won this election... So everyone who is listening, do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes."

President-elect Byeden will address the nation tonight.

And let's give the ghost of John McCain the last word: "I prefer people who don't lose reelections." Or Green Day:

Freedom's Just Another Word For...

The Dismantling Of American Democracy by Nancy Ohanian

Brown County is the fourth most populous county in Wisconsin. Green Bay is the county seat and biggest city. After the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court forced in-person voting on the state, Brown County was hot hard with new COVID cases. The Public Health Department reported another 95 cases Wednesday, bringing the total above 1,600. Wisconsin was headed for a mild pandemic before the Supreme Court ruling which has steepened the curve considerably. Yesterday the state has 1,540 cases per million people; not good but increasing by the day.

The Republican ideologues on the state Supreme Court, led by GOP ideologue Chief Justice Patience Roggensack, seem determined to cause more unnecessary suffering in the state. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported asked "How do you take an already heated Supreme Court hearing on Gov. Tony Evers' stay-at-home order and make it even more explosive?" He responded to his own question: First, you have one justice liken the order closing schools and businesses to 'tyranny' while also bringing up the Japanese-American internment camps from World War II. Then you get Chief Justice Patience Roggensack to dial it up even more by appearing to downplay a flare-up of coronavirus cases at a major meatpacking facility in Brown County. '(The surge) was due to the meatpacking-- that's where Brown County got the flare,' Roggensack said. 'It wasn't just the regular folks in Brown County.'"

In 2016 Brown County voters gave Bernie more votes then either Hillary or Trump. Bernie won 22,471 votes to Hillary's 16,626 and Trump's 18,706. In November, the county went Republican, Trump winning 52.7% to 41.9%. In 2018 the voters split their tickets. In the gubernatorial race, Republican incumbent Scott Walker, who lost statewide, beat Democrat Tony Evers 53.1% to 44.7%. But the county also went for Democrat Tammy Baldwin in the Senate race, giving her a 51.5% to 48.5% win over Republican Leah Vukmir. And in the congressional race (WI-08), GOP incumbent Mike Gallagher won handily over Beau Liegeois. Brown, the biggest county in the district performed at R+21 level.

State Rep. JoCasta Zamarripa said she was "very offended" by Roggensack's statement.

"It's classist, and it's out of touch," said Zamarripa, a Milwaukee Democrat who is also a Milwaukee alderwoman. "It's embarrassing that we have a Supreme Court justice who would say something like that."

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said he was "shocked" by the remark, and Democratic Sen. Dave Hansen of Green Bay accused Roggensack of "elitism and ignorance." He said the statement showed the justice was "unfit to serve" on the high court.

Labor leaders were equally upset with Roggensack, the head of the conservative majority on the court.

Pam Fendt, president of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, said she found Roggensack's remark "divisive." Her group represents 100 local unions with 25,000 workers.

Fendt said those working at meatpacking plants live in neighborhoods, go to church and coach Little League. They are, she said, as much a part of the community as anyone else.

"It is shocking and deeply offensive that Justice Patience Roggensack would suggest that workers in meatpacking plants aren’t 'regular folks' who deserve protection," said the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 1473, which represents 5,000 employees in meatpacking plants in Wisconsin.

Umair Haque also answered a question-- why the world is horrified by the American Idiot. He wrote that "the American idiot is, by now, a figure that’s the stuff of myth and legend across the world. Nobody else is really quite sure: are Americans really like this? This… well… laughable? Yesterday, they were the kind of people who made their kids do “active shooter drills,” meaning masked men burst into classrooms… and pretend… to kill them. What the? Today, they’re the kind of people who happily congregate in parks and on beaches during a global pandemic… when the lunatic fringe amongst them isn’t protesting for “liberation” in the first place. What on earth? I don’t use the term as an insult-- the American idiot. I mean it in a precise way, as I try to remind people. For the Greeks, 'idiot' carried a precise and special meaning. The person who was only interested in private life, private gain, private advantage. Who had no conception of a public good, common wealth, shared interest. To the Greeks, the pioneers of democracy, the creators of the demos, such a person was the most contemptible of all. Because even the Greeks seemed to understand: you can’t make a functioning democracy out of…idiots."

Now, I’m going to generalize. But I don’t mean that all Americans are idiots. I mean that, for example, more or less everyone who wants to carry a gun to Starbucks, deny their neighbours healthcare, make people beg for medicine online, and not let anyone in society ever retire… all of those people in the world, by and large, are Americans. Nobody else-- nobody in the whole world at this point in history-- thinks such things are remotely desirable. Hence, the American idiot. It means: the world’s largest and most hardened subset of idiots at this point, in the Classical Greek meaning of the word, is largely American.

‘Freedom?’ ... ‘More like freedumb.’

...When the world looks at America, it sees the American idiot, and what it tries-- and usually fails, because it’s lost for words-- to express is something like this: can people really be this selfish? This oblivious? This… thankless? Why do they keep voting for less healthcare, retirement, education, income, savings, happiness, trust, year after year-- even the so-called good ones? What kind of people…why are the literally the only people left in the whole world who do that? And then… complain bitterly about not having… the very things… they deny each other? Who can even make sense of this, the bizarre circular firing squad of social suicide that America has become? But all those, of course, are key traits of the idiot. The answer-- sadly, I think-- is: yes, people can really be this way.

Perhaps because they don’t know any other way. Maybe because it’s all they’ve ever been taught or told. That’s not an apologia for the American idiot, by the way. Or is it? Even I wonder. Still, let me try to explain as best I can-- America’s strange and complicated with freedom, one so perverse that freedom became twisted into something very much like its opposite. It has to do with the way Americans think-- unsubtly, narrowly, single-mindedly-- about what freedom is, and means.

About half a century ago, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin divided freedom into two categories-- maybe you already know them. Negative freedom, or freedom from. And positive freedom, or freedom to. The theory then went-- and this became the basis of generations of American thought-- that only the freedom from was worth developing and cultivating.

Berlin was a Russian-born dickhead-- actually a Latvian living in St. Petersburg when the Russian Revolution broke out in 1905. Listen to this YouTube of him and you'll want to throw a rotten tomato in his face. You can't; he died in 1997.

The freedom “to,” on the other hand, was vilified as something that only communists and socialists would want. Why? Because my “freedom to”-- say to be educated, or to be healthy-- requires your input, help, cooperation. But American thinking-- which became obsessed with individualism-- couldn’t admit or permit that, because then maybe you weren’t “taking responsibility for yourself” and all the rest of the jargon.

All this dates back, of course, to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the Uberman. It’s not too hard to see why a society that was born in slavery, and continued into segregation, in which horrors like crippling and maiming people for the color of their skin were perfectly alright-- why a society like that ends up prizing freedom from. America’s obsession with freedom from dates right back to the slave-owner’s desire for freedom from government intervention, law, common decency, any tiny shred of humanity-- to have the power to exploit and abuse human beings on an unthinkable scale. There’s a straight line from Nietzsche’s “master morality” naturally dominating the “slave morality” to Berlin’s “freedom from” any restraint on power-- and that straight line is the one American thinking, still backwards, mired in the logic of domination and exploitation, traced.

...Here’s how extreme America’s belief in freedumb-- freedom as the absence of any kind of obligation or responsibility to anything greater than narrow, immediate, infantile self-satisfaction-- has gotten. Americans aren’t just congregating in parks and beaches during a global pandemic. They’re literally the only people in the world who just voted against better healthcare (from Bernie and Liz) in the middle of a pandemic. Think about the scale of such folly for a moment. What kind of people vote for worse healthcare… during a pandemic? John Cleese would struggle to make a face that expressed the surreal tragicomedy of such a thing. But that’s what Americans did… what they do, over and over and over again.

Why? Because they still believe-- even if they don’t think they believe-- in Berlin’s tired, weary, flawed old distinction. Freedom has only come to mean the removal of any restraint-- negative freedom-- on the exercise of individual desire, the satiation of individual appetite. What freedom still doesn’t mean in America is any of the following, good healthcare, retirement, education, and so forth, because what freedom has never meant is any form of collective action.

Let me put that more sharply. What if the only way that I can have decent healthcare is for you to have decent healthcare-- first? What if the only for me to have a decent retirement is for us all to have one, first? You see, that logic-- which is the math of public goods-- makes a mockery of Berlin’s dichotomy. Then, what we don’t need is simple “freedom from” some kind of restraint-- but the “freedom to”… collectively organize, coordinate, take action.

Freedom from can give us liberty as individuals, it’s true, from kings, and even governments. But only the freedom to can give us liberty as societies, groups, classes, nations. These two kinds of freedoms might exist in tension-- but try to have one without the other, and the result is a spectacular collapse. Freedom to without freedom from gave us the Soviet Union. But freedom from without freedom to gave us America, the failed state, the world’s first poor rich country. Gentle Europe, wise New Zealand, humble and kind Canada-- which balance the two-- have found a kind of miracle in that equilibrium.

...Carrying a gun to Starbucks-- so kids have to do active shooter drills. Being able to “choose” between a million health insurance plans, none of which covers you-- so that you don’t have to pay higher taxes to the hated government. Making everyone stand on their own two feet-- even while every force in society is cutting those very limbs away. Never taking any kind of collective action as a society-- that’s socialism! That’s communism!! Those things are bad!! They’re terrible!

No, my friends. Americans will never understand the miracle of European social democracy, of Canadian investment in each other, of New Zealand making a difficult, joyous peace with a broken past. They won’t. Because they can’t? Because they don’t want to? Because nobody teaches them about the gentle and beautiful power in cooperation, in dignity, in respect for the self and others as more than a thing of appetite? Because they’re trapped by a sordid history-- which they secretly care little about overcoming?

Maybe, in the end, it’s just all the above.

Freedom! Here I am, the American idiot, carrying my gun to Starbucks, before I go to Walmart, where I’ll choose between a million different flavors of the Everyday Low Price, and then I’ll dream about being Great Again, while I drive my big car down the big, empty highway, listening to some bellowing mullah of capital and individualism and cruelty telling me to hate and rage a little more. Along the way, so what if I create my very own exploitation, abuse, misery, decline into poverty, despair, degradation, dehumanization? Hey! Don’t tell me any different!

Isn’t that what freedom really is?

The Nature Of Conservatism-- Profiting From Societal Adversity

McConnell is a master of one thing and one thing only-- obstruction

I'm not going to argue about conservative, greed-obsessed businessmen rushing headlong into markets to profit from societal disruption. It's not illegal and anyone who ever thought a conservative had an predisposition towards ethical or Christian fundamental values was just kidding themselves anyway. My beef, though, is with conservative greed-obsessed elected officials. What I expect from private citizens of a conservative bent is not what I expect from conservative public officials. Nor should you. In two separate polls, a majority of North Carolina voters say Senator Richard Burr, who said in 2016 that he wouldn't run again, should resign for selling $1.6 million in hotel and other stocks based on inside information he obtained as chair of the Senate Intel Committee. He was only one of nearly a dozen conservatives in Congress who were doing the same thing-- selling stocks before the deluge-- although one, right-wing congressman Rob Wittman (R-VA) ran out as soon as he had some inside info and bought thousands of dollars of stock in AbbVie, Inc, which makes antiviral drugs. (His greed and lack of ethics, though, did him no good; he lost money too.) Robert Reich yesterday: Senators Loeffler and Burr-- and any other senator if found to have benefited from insider information about the pandemic, including Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)-- must resign immediately."

Last night the Washington Post reported that "Trump’s private business has shut down six of its top seven revenue-producing clubs and hotels because of restrictions meant to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, potentially depriving Trump’s company of millions of dollars in revenue. Those closures come as Trump is considering easing restrictions on movement sooner than federal public health experts recommend, in the name of reducing the virus’s economic damage." Trump had two reactions. First was to tell Mnuchin that a bailout for [his] hotels and golf courses had to be included in any stimulus package and second was that he's opening the economy again, no matter what it does to the efforts to flatten the curve and save lives.

And now Mitch McConnell is leading Senate Republicans to pass a stimulus package that serves their own partisan interests and the desires of the donor class while screwing over working families, the same way they did in 2008. Georgia Senate candidate TeresaTomlinson saw it the same way I did. Yesterday she sent her supporters a note that included this: "Now, amidst a global pandemic, Republican senators are committing insider trading while they try to score a $500 billion slush fund for a corporate bailout that would help their donors. The world’s challenges are too important to continue with failed Republican leadership. We have to defeat the Republicans this November to fix the Affordable Care Act, guarantee universal healthcare, and protect people-- not corporations-- from the coronavirus pandemic."

But wait! Won't Trump fix everything now that we're going from "It's a hoax" to resurrection Sunday in April?

Also Yesterday, Tom Neuburger pointed out the crossroads the country has come to: a collision between two competing imperatives-- "does the nation serve the pathological wants of the few who control it or the immediate and existential needs of the many who live in it?"

The few-- the bankers and profiteers; investors and CEOs of all kinds and stripes; their well-paid enablers in the media and professional classes-- think the coronavirus emergency will pass and "business" (our modern, rapacious way of doing it) will eventually return to normal.

Thus for them, the current crisis represents once-in-a-generation opportunity for theft on the grandest of scales, the plundering of public goods and control in the time of greatest emergency. They think this theft, like the many similar others that went before it, will occur with no consequence for them and only long-term consequences for others-- thefts like the 2000 election, which cost them nothing while adding to their power and credibility, but left a great many others broken or dead; or the theft of family fortunes and futures during the 2008 global meltdown, losses that even today only they have recovered from.

...[T]he massive loss of wealth by the working class after 2008-- wealth they have still not regained-- happened slowly, and in a nation filled with "back to normal" TV propaganda (you don't see the struggling depicted on spry network dramas and comedies) their constant pain has by now been normalized and accepted as just the way things are "for some people." (Those "some people," it must be noted, put Donald Trump in the White House.)

...On whose side will government throw its weight? On the side of the pathological few or the side of the suffering many?

The answer to that question will determine the future of the nation. Will we more resemble the country of FDR and his widely loved government for the people, or that of Louis XVI and his overthrown government of the people. A crossroads indeed. Will the national needs of the many be honored and met? Or will the pathological few light a flame that burns us all?

Now listen carefully to Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), a progressive, not a conservative. Ignore the imbecile talking head asking him questions, but listen to what he is prioritizing.





Crackpot Republicans in Ohio and Texas are breaking the law by using the pandemic as cover to prohibit all abortions. That's what conservatives have always done and will always do-- look for ways to push their toxic, anti-family agenda whenever they can take advantage of an opportunity, no matter how dire.

Today, Bernie, reacting to the decision by the Trump Regime's FDA to grant Gilead Sciences a seven-year monopoly for antiviral medication remdesivir for potential treatment of the coronavirus, said "It is truly outrageous that after taxpayers put tens of millions of dollars into developing remdesivir, Trump’s FDA is exploiting a law reserved for rare diseases to privatize a drug to treat a pandemic virus. The Trump Administration must rescind this corporate giveaway to Gilead and make any treatment and vaccine free for everybody. Now is not the time for profiteering in the pharmaceutical industry. Now is the time to bring our scientists together to develop and produce the best treatment for the coronavirus as quickly as possible. When Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine 65 years ago, he understood the tremendous value it would have for all of humanity, and he refused to patent it. Right now, we must put human life above corporate profit. We cannot give pharmaceutical corporations a monopoly on treatments that could save millions of people during this crisis."

Green Day/Blue Texas-- Insomniac Platinum Award Plaque Contest For Mike Siegel

March 3 isn't just Super Tuesday for the presidential candidates, it is also the big day for many congressional candidates all over the country. One of the best candidates Blue America has endorsed, Mike Siegel-- who has the best chance to replace a toxic Trump enabler (Michael McCaul)-- needs some help with his field campaign. Blue America wants to help him raise some money for that and we're going to offer the double platinum Green Day Insomniac award you see pictured here. (Green Day released their 13th studio album, Father of All Motherfuckers, on Friday.)

This is an RIAA-certified award for 2 million albums sold and it was awarded to their label president Howie Klein, now the treasurer of the Blue America PAC. The simple version of the rules: donate any amount to Mike Siegel's campaign on this page between today and 9pm (PT) on Valentine's Day (February 14) or send a check, made out to Mike Siegel for Congress, to Blue America, P.O. Box 27201, Los Angeles, CA 90027. Any amount... what ever you want to contribute. We will randomly select one winner regardless of the amount of the contribution.

The much longer, FEC-demanded rules in legalese are here for any masochists.

Mike grew up in Oakland, California in the 1980s and 90s, and he told us that Green Day was part of the soundtrack for his crew in high school. "Their album art and videos," said Mike, "acknowledged life in the East Bay, from walking the streets of Berkeley to riding BART. And their energy gave expression to our rebellious spirit!" And now he's a Texas civil rights attorney and a married man with two children... and a great congressional candidate.

Mike told us he and his team "have built the coalition to carry us to victory, and now the last piece is the gather the resources we need to communicate with every voter between now and Election Day. This is a campaign that is running hard on labor issues and the Green New Deal, which has not only earned me the support of folks like the Sunrise Movement and 350 Action, but also the Texas AFL-CIO, even though many of the workers in the Texas 10th are a part of the fossil fuel industry. We are taking a strong stand on climate change and voting rights, on justice for Rodney Reed (a Texas death row prisoner who grew up in TX-10), on Medicare for All in a region with closing rural hospitals, on a living wage and a retirement with dignity."

Early voting in Texas starts on February 18, four days after the contest ends. The money we raise for him will help his campaign bring voters to the polls and help keep getting his message out to voters. Please consider kicking in by tapping on the Insomniac ActBlue thermometer on the right and help make sure TX-10 replaces a reactionary Republican with a progressive Democrat.

We Will, We Will, Rock You

-by Valley Girl

Queen has been on my mind. So has Bernie Sanders. Queen and Bernie Sanders swirled together when I found the video above on YouTube.

The Oscars are tomorrow night. My arm had to be twisted to go see the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. I really didn’t want to see it, because I couldn’t imagine it could do justice to Freddie Mercury. To my surprise, the movie was enjoyable, exhilarating to watch. It seemed to go by in an instant. And it was easy to love the music. No, it was not deep dive into the complexities of Freddie Mercury, nor Queen. One reviewer said that the movie played "fast and loose" with the facts.  Undoubtedly it did. But it was meant to be a popular movie, and as such gloriously succeeded.

The closing scene is the re-creation of Queen’s performance at Live Aid.  Nothing "fast and loose" there, in the performance. It’s cut down to highlight  maybe 10 or 15 minutes. You can watch the original at Wembly Stadium here:



Will Bohemian Rhapsody win "Best Picture" at the Oscars mañana?  No way, I say. The category I’ll be watching is "Best Actor." I’m placing my bet on Rami Malek, who played Freddie Mercury. A stunning performance.

Now back to what I said at the beginning, about Queen and Bernie swirling together in my mind. Two Queen songs have become intertwined: "We will Rock You" and "We are the Champions."  Performed in sequence on stage. But the choruses have taken on a life of their own.

We Will Rock You:

[Chorus]
We will, we will rock you
We will, we will rock you

[Chorus]
We will, we will rock you, sing it out
We will, we will rock you

[Chorus]
We will, we will rock you, sing it
We will, we will rock you, everybody
We will, we will rock you, hmm
We will, we will rock you, alright

Be sure to add in the stomp stomp clap part: otherwise a huge element would be missing.

That’s a Bernie anthem in the making. Because Bernie has been rocking the boat since forever, but now more than ever.

"We are the Champions":

Not much more to the chorus than adding “of the world” to the end (or whatever you wish).

About the two songs being played together, yes, Queen engaged the audience big time, no doubt. Queen and especially Freddie Mercury were stellar at engaging audiences. In their time. But watch this Green Day performance at the Redding Festival, bringing things into slightly more current musical triumph:

Trump Stripped Bare

Reading Philip Rucker's preview of Cliff Sims' new book, Team of Vipers yesterday-- a stark contrast to Lincoln's team of rivals-- you absolutely know Sims is going to get a movie contract. There will be plenty of movies made about the tragic (and comic) Trump regime. I'm betting Team of Vipers will be one of the first. "Perhaps the book’s most cinematic chapter of chaos," wrote Rucker, "is 'The Mooch Is Loose,' a reconstruction of Anthony Scaramucci’s 11 days as White House communications director. Sims was Scaramucci’s right-hand man and describes the flamboyant aide’s hunt for 'leakers,' which began with his own staff. Scaramucci assembled the 40-odd media aides and threatened to fire them all, Sims writes, as if he were a 'fire-breathing dragon that had just returned from laying waste to the unsuspecting peasants in the village.' Sims writes that Scaramucci ordered them to reply to anyone in the White House instructing them to leak information to a reporter, including then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, by saying: 'I cannot do that. I only report to Anthony Scaramucci and he reports directly to the president of the United States.' Even Trump was amused. 'Can you believe this guy?' the president told Sims. 'He’s completely out of his mind-- like, on drugs or something-- totally out of his mind. We’ll figure it out, but the guy is crazy.'"

I put together the sound track for the first platinum record for a TV show: Friends. I'd do Team of Vipers and donate all the money to an elect Bernie fund. Cue: Green Day...



Rucker has the first scene of the film all laid out already. Señor Trumpanzee was shoveling junk food into his porcine face, watching TV, "increasingly angry as House Speaker Paul Ryan criticized his handling of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He held the remote control 'like a pistol' and yelled for an assistant to get the Republican leader on the phone. 'Paul, do you know why Democrats have been kicking your ass for decades? Because they know a little word called "loyalty,"' Trump told Ryan, then a Wisconsin congressman. 'Why do you think Nancy (Pelosi) has held on this long? Have you seen her? She’s a disaster. Every time she opens her mouth another Republican gets elected. But they stick with her... Why can’t you be loyal to your president, Paul?' The tormenting continued. Trump recalled Ryan distancing himself from Trump in October 2016, in the days after the Access Hollywood video in which he bragged of groping women first surfaced in the Washington Post. 'I remember being in Wisconsin and your own people were booing you,' Trump told him, according to former West Wing communications aide Cliff Sims. 'You were out there dying like a dog, Paul. Like a dog! And what’d I do? I saved your ass.'"

The browbeating of the top Republican on Capitol Hill was one of the vivid snapshots of life inside the Trump White House told by one of its original inhabitants, Cliff Sims, in his 384-page book Team of Vipers, which goes on sale next week and was obtained in advance by The Post. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Sims, who enjoyed uncommon personal access to Trump, recounts expletive-filled scenes of chaos, dysfunction and duplicity among the president, his family members and administration officials. Unlike memoirs of other Trump officials, Sims’ book is neither a sycophantic portrayal of the president nor a blistering account written to settle scores. The author presents himself as a true believer in Trump and his agenda, and even writes whimsically of the president, but he still is critical of him, especially his morality. Sims also finds fault in himself, a rarity in Trump World, writing that at times he was “selfish,” “nakedly ambitious” and “a coward.”

The author reconstructs in comic detail the Trump team’s first day at work, when the president sat in the residence, raging about news coverage of the relatively small size of his inauguration crowds, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer scrambled to address it.



Spicer had worked the team “into a frenzy,” and it fell to Sims to write the script for his first statement to the media. Nervously chewing gum, Spicer dictated “a torrent of expletives with a few salient points scattered in between.” At one point, Sims’ computer crashed and he lost the draft, so it had to be rewritten. And in their rush to satisfy the impatient president, nobody checked the facts. Spicer, he writes, was “walking into his own execution.”

“It’s impossible to deny how absolutely out of control the White House staff-- again, myself included-- was at times,” Sims writes. The book’s scenes are consistent with news reporting at the time from inside the White House.

Sims depicts Trump as deeply suspicious of his own staff. He recalls a private huddle in which he and Keith Schiller, the president’s longtime bodyguard and confidant, helped Trump draw up an enemies list with a Sharpie on White House stationery. “We’re going to get rid of all the snakes, even the bottom-feeders,” Trump told them.

Then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told the staff that he viewed his job as serving the “country first, POTUS second,” which Sims interpreted as potentially hostile to Trump’s agenda.

Sims recounts that Kelly once confided to him in a moment of exasperation: “This is the worst fucking job I’ve ever had. People apparently think that I care when they write that I might be fired. If that ever happened, it would be the best day I’ve had since I walked into this place.”

A conservative media figure in Alabama, Sims came to work on Trump’s 2016 campaign and cultivated a personal relationship with the candidate-turned-president. Sims writes rich, extended dialogue from his conversations with Trump and others in the administration.

As White House director of message strategy, Sims regularly met Trump at the private elevator of the residence and accompanied him to video tapings-- carrying a can of Tresemme Tres Two hair spray, extra hold, for the boss. At one such taping, about an hour after Trump had tweeted that he saw MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a facelift,” the president sought feedback from Sims and Spicer.

“They’re going to say it’s not presidential,” Trump said, referring to the media. “But you know what? It’s modern-day presidential.” The president then raged about the Morning Joe program on which Brzezinski appears and instructed Spicer, “Don’t you dare say I watch that show.”

Sims also recounts a meeting with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime friend, and former chief strategist Stephen Bannon at which Sessions suggested a polygraph test of national security officials to root out “leakers” after The Post reported the transcripts of Trump’s phone calls with the Mexican president and Australian prime minister.

At times, Trump evinced less rage than a lack of interest. Sims recounts one time when Ryan was in the Oval Office explaining the ins and outs of the Republican health care bill to the president. As Ryan droned on for 15 minutes, Trump sipped on a glass of Diet Coke, peered out at the Rose Garden, stared aimlessly at the walls and, finally, walked out.

Ryan kept talking as the president wandered down the hall to his private dining room, where he flicked on his giant flat-screen TV. Apparently, he had had enough of Ryan’s talk. It fell to Vice President Mike Pence to retrieve Trump and convince him to return to the Oval Office so they could continue their strategy session.

Sims reconstructs moments of crisis for the West Wing communications team in play-by-play detail, including the domestic abuse allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter and the firing of James Comey as FBI director.

He paints Spicer, counselor Kellyanne Conway and commun-ications adviser Mercedes Schlapp in an especially negative light, calling Conway “the American Sniper of West Wing marksmen” and describing her agenda as “survival over all others, including the president.”

Sims writes that former aide Omarosa Manigault cursed members of the Congressional Black Caucus when they asked for a moment of privacy in the West Wing after meeting with Trump and before addressing the media.

“Privacy?!” Manigault said. “You think you can come up in our house and demand fucking privacy? Hell, no! You must be outta your... mind.”

The day Trump met black people

Odd There Are So Few Members Of The Working Class In Congress? Remember, The System Is Rigged

In the last few weeks, I've been complaining that the elites who control both parties recruit elites like themselves to recruit and to support. When someone from the working class self-selects and manages to win a primary, those elites are more likely to turn up their nose at them than to support them. After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her primary about a member of the House elite club in New York, I sensed that the House Democrats were more vicious in their reaction than even the House Republicans were. I remember thinking to myself, self, I sure hope she has a thick skin! Ultimately though, I know what will happen. Pelosi and her cronies will try to coop her.

It was a similar story with Randy Bryce in Wisconsin. Bryce built his own @IronStache working class brand. The DCCC chuckled. Then he raised more money and got more press than any DCCC knucklehead they recruited from anywhere in the country. No one cared about any of their shit candidates-- most of whom seemed to be rolling off some kind of white collar assembly-line in the basement of DCCC headquarters in DC. Instead they cared about Bryce. The DCCC sniffed around to see if they could bottle what he was doing. Once they realized they couldn't-- and saw that he didn't "even" graduate from college and that he wore work boots to their soirees and wanted to talk about labor unions "too much," they dropped him like a hot potato. Ryan's corporately-sponsored SuperPAC saw a chance to keep the seat red. So far, they've poured $1.8 million into the district-- and announced today that they plan on spending another $1.2 million-- on behalf of their corporate lawyer Ryan clone, Bryan Steil (a complete nothing), almost all of it to smear Bryce. Neither the DCCC nor Pelosi's PAC has responded. They've decided to let him die on the vine, another damn member of the working class trying to crash their club. They want him to learn his place-- and fuck WI-01.


Nor, obviously, are Alexandria and Randy the only working class candidates being ignored by the DCCC. Nate McMurray has a good shot to win his western New York race. He's an excellent candidate and his Republican opponent was just indicted on dozens of serious fraud charges. But the DCCC isn't interested. Nate isn't their kind of guy. His dad died when he was young and his mom at age 35 was suddenly raising seven kids. They certainly struggled. Today, Nate, whose own struggle included working his way through college scrubbing bathrooms, told us he still cuts his own grass. "I know what it's like to work dead end jobs and worry about your family, about the finances of your family. My first priority is to help working families like mine growing up. I'm running against a man that inherited millions and exploited his public position to make money. I don't think he can relate to the people of this region. And that's why I want to go to Congress to fight for families like mine."

The guy in the video up top, Nick Carnes, wrote a book about why Congress has virtually no one who made a living with his or her hands, The Cash Ceiling: Why Only the Rich Run for Office-- and What We Can Do About It and yesterday The Guardian published a piece by him Why are so few US politicians from the working class? "Contrary to the ideal of a government of and by the people," he wrote, "new research shows Americans are almost always governed by the very privileged." He understands the significance of Bryce and Ocasio-Cortez. "This year," he continued, "at least two races for seats in the US House of Representatives will feature high-profile candidates with significant experience in working-class jobs – the manual labor, service industry and clerical jobs that make up over half of the American labor force. In Wisconsin’s first congressional district, the Democratic nominee is a delivery-driver-turned-ironworker named Randy Bryce, nicknamed “Ironstache”, who takes credit for “scaring off” Paul Ryan. In New York’s 14th congressional district, a former bartender and waitress named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently made headlines for her stunning primary-election upset over incumbent Democrat Joe Crowley. Candidates like Bryce and Ocasio-Cortez-- politicians with significant experience in the kinds of jobs most Americans punch in for every day-- are genuine anomalies in 2018, and in US politics more generally."

The president is the billionaire head of a global business empire. His cabinet is mostly millionaires. Most members of Congress are millionaires. Most supreme court justices are millionaires. Millionaires make up less than 3% of the general public, but have unified majority control of all three branches of the federal government. Working-class Americans, on the other hand, make up about half of the country. But they have never held more than 2% of the seats in any Congress since the nation was founded.

The root cause-- and one of the reasons that candidates such as Bryce and Ocasio-Cortez raise eyebrows-- is that workers almost never run, even at the state and local levels. In nationwide surveys of people campaigning for state legislatures in 2012 and 2014, candidates from working-class jobs made up just 4% of both Republican and Democratic candidates. In California-- the one state that offers detailed data on the occupational backgrounds of candidates at the local level-- between 1995 and 2011, workers made up just 4% of candidates for county and local office.

So why are so few workers running? In a democracy like ours where almost any citizen can stand for elected office, why are the vast majority of candidates drawn from the ranks of white-collar professionals, and usually affluent or wealthy ones at that?... Just as working-class people in the general public tend to be more pro-worker (and business owners tend to be more pro-business, farmers tend to be more pro-farm, etc), politicians from different social classes tend to bring different perspectives with them to public office, especially when it comes to economic issues. In confidential surveys of state legislators, leaders from the working class in both parties are 20 to 50 percentage points more likely to support policies such as social welfare programs, regulation of the private sector, government-backed healthcare and efforts to reduce economic inequality. In scorecards that rank how members of Congress vote on economic legislation, those from the working class consistently earn significantly higher marks from pro-worker groups like the AFL-CIO and lower marks from business groups like the Chamber of Commerce.

Bryce: "There’s no question: if we want people in Congress who will legislate on our behalf they need to understand what working people go through. The problem is that we have auctions, not elections. Until we have meaningful campaign election reform we probably won’t see many working people drop their lives and try to run. It’s not easy, but it needs to be done."

These differences, coupled with the virtual absence of working-class people in our political institutions, ultimately have enormous consequences for public policy. States with fewer legislators from the working class spend billions less on social welfare each year, offer less generous unemployment benefits and tax corporations at lower rates. Towns with fewer working-class people on their city councils devote smaller shares of their budgets to social safety net programs; an analysis I conducted in 2013 suggested that cities nationwide would spend approximately $22.5bn more on social assistance programs each year if their councils were made up of the same mix of classes as the people they represent. Unfortunately, we can’t write off white-collar government as politically inconsequential. As the old saying goes, when the working class isn’t at the table, it’s often on the menu.

We also can’t dismiss government by the privileged as an inevitable byproduct of some deficiency on the part of working-class people themselves. It sounds odd to have to state this, but to the contrary, workers and professionals alike tend to have the qualities voters want – traits like honesty, compassion and a strong work ethic – at about the same rates. And when working-class Americans hold office, they tend to do about as well as professionals on objective measures of government performance. Between 1996 and 2001, for instance, towns governed by majority-working-class city councils were indistinguishable from other cities in terms of their rates of population growth, revenue growth, school spending, and debt. The idea that workers don’t hold office because they lack the necessary skills simply doesn’t add up. If just 1% of working-class Americans had what it takes to govern, that would be more than enough potential politicians to staff every office in the United States.

Last, we also can’t blame government by the privileged on some preference for affluent leaders on the part of American voters. When working-class candidates run, voters tend to like them just fine. Between 1945 and 2008, members of Congress from the working class earned about as many votes as those from white-collar careers. In surveys embedded with randomized control trials, voters are just as likely to say that they would vote for a working-class candidate as they are to pick an otherwise-identical white-collar candidate. When voters are asked directly why they think so few working-class people hold office, “workers are less qualified” is the least popular answer; around 75% of people surveyed in 2014 said that working-class candidates tended to be at least as qualified as white-collar professionals. When workers run, they don’t face a class-biased electorate.

Nonetheless, they seldom run. But researchers and reformers are starting to understand why-- and to identify interventions that might give working-class Americans more of a seat at the table in government.

...First, workers seldom run for public office in the US because of the fundamental personal burdens associated with campaigning – doing so always takes a great deal of time and energy, and working-class Americans are far less likely to have the time and energy to spare. When I surveyed seemingly qualified working-class and white-collar citizens, the biggest gap in their reported concerns about running wasn’t a fear about being able to raise enough money, or a difference in raw political ambition, it was a more fundamental concern about losing out on income and work in order to campaign. As one worker (who herself had run for city council and won) put it, “When you are working 40 hours a week and working 40 hours on the campaign, it’s too much.”

Second, and partly as a result, the party and interest group leaders who help people launch political careers often pass over workers in favor of more familiar white-collar candidates. In a 2013 survey of the leaders of county-level political parties, most were quite open about their preference for white-collar candidates. More than 30% said workers are worse at campaigning, more than half said that workers were harder to recruit and two-thirds of local party leaders worried that workers would make bad fundraisers. One survey item even asked party leaders to compare two hypothetical candidates; when evaluating equally qualified workers and professionals, party leaders were consistently more likely to back the white-collar candidate. Qualified working-class Americans almost never appear on your ballot in part because powerful people are less likely to encourage or support them.

White-collar government isn’t caused by voters, or some deficiency on the part of workers or even the soaring costs associated with political campaigns. It is caused by the simple reality that campaigning requires taking time off work and getting help from political elites, and working-class Americans often can’t do either.

From a reform standpoint, that is actually good news. Making public office more accessible to a broad cross-section of the economy won’t require significantly changing our laws or electoral institutions. People who work in and around government just need to devote more attention and resources to qualified working-class candidates.

Political parties and activist organizations already know how to do exactly that. Just a generation ago, women made up around 2% of Congress-- today that number is closer to 20%. What changed? Party leaders and interest groups began devoting time and resources to female candidates, working to identify talented women, and helping them overcome the obstacles that prevented them from running.

When pro-worker organizations have attempted similar interventions targeting working-class candidates, the results have been extremely promising. In New Jersey, for instance, the state affiliate of the AFL-CIO runs a well-established “labor candidates school” that has trained working-class candidates for more than 700 state and local elections. Graduates of this pioneering program have won 75% of the elections in which they have run and have gone on to have long and effective careers in public office. Organizations that understand the challenges facing workers and that invest in overcoming them seem to have found the key to helping the working class break through America’s cash ceiling.

A half century ago, women were anomalies in congressional elections, and in American political institutions more generally. Today they aren’t. Ironworkers and restaurant servers don’t have to be either.

Alan Grayson, who devoted much of his political life protecting and trying to improve Social Security and Medicare, grew up in the Bronx, a stone's throw from Alexandria Ocasio's district. Years ago he told me how he had put himself through Harvard by cleaning the toilets at night his classmates used. This morning I asked him if he thought this whole thing is a genuine problem. Oh, he does. This is what he told me.

First, working-class leaders can be great leaders. Think of Lech Walesa, an electrician, who almost brought down the entire Communist system.

Second, the absence of the working class from elected office has a huge impact on public policy. That’s why mortgage interest is deductible and rent is not, for instance.

Third, the great majority of candidates in both parties are people who don’t have to show up for work each day, whether they are lawyers, businessmen, retired, or simply rich. It’s very difficult to campaign for a major office and work full-time at the same time. In some cases, it’s also difficult for an elected official to live on the official salary. For instance, when Bill Clinton was elected governor, his salary was $35,000 a year [insert inevitable Hillary-futures-trading snark here].

Finally, both parties do discriminate against working-class candidates, not so much on the basis of elitism, but primarily because working-class candidates can’t self-fund, which is a fundamental consideration on both sides. (Another unspoken consideration is that workers have much lower turnout in elections.)  Despite the fact that both parties raise more than a quarter of a billion dollars for House candidates alone each cycle, they still have the mindset of being money-takers, not money-givers. There is no infrastructure whatsoever to raise money for working-class candidates, the way that there is for women, minority and LGBT candidates. It doesn’t have to be that way; if the unions were to decide, for instance, that they would back only working-class candidates (the way that some women donors give only to women candidates), then that alone would make a huge difference.

Nice song, huh? Ready for another version?



Great, huh? Now are you ready for a Senate candidate with a working class background? When's the last time any of us saw that? It's been a while. As on the June 30 FEC reporting deadline, Kevin de León had raised $1,310,851. His opponent, Dianne Feinstein, wrote herself a check for $5 million-- and then raised another ten million, only $886,109 from the kind of small donors who have given to Kevin's campaign.

If there a too few men and women with working class backgrounds in the House, you can imagine the scarcity in the Senate. It's what drew Blue America so strongly to Jeff Merkley of Oregon. Today our working class hero is even closer to home, like I said, Kevin de León here in California. Earlier today, Kevin told us that "for a very long time, wealth and privilege were prerequisites for any U.S. Senate hopeful. And while I don't begrudge my opponent her background, I take a different perspective as the youngest child of a single immigrant mother with a third-grade education, a woman who worked her fingers to the bone in very wealthy enclaves near San Diego. I learned the value of hard work by watching my mother’s ethic. She didn’t have access to venture capital for a startup that would potentially change the world as we know it. But she changed the world in the sense that I was born from her, and I became the only person of color in 133 years to lead the California State Senate. And ever since, I have passed laws that lift up working people like my mother. At the end of the day, my politics are about opportunity. That’s what people want, and right now we have a system that’s rigged against the majority of Americans."

You're getting an idea why we're so enthusiastic about Kevin's campaign, why we endorsed him and why we're urging DWT readers to contribute to that campaign by clicking on the 2018 Senate thermometer just above. Before you watch the stunning video below, just read one more quick paragraph, from Kevin:

"I shouldn’t be critiqued for my situation, and no one should besmirch the senior senator from California for being one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, or for being a billionaire. It is what it is. But, just as my background has informed my priorities, California's senior senator's background has influenced hers. For a very long time, the incumbent senior senator from California has had an anti-immigrant record and used anti-immigrant rhetoric. And that has helped feed this anti-immigrant hysteria at a national level for a very long time-- voting for a wall back in 2006, before Donald Trump entered the scene. And that is something I can't help but criticize."

Green Day Fan? Want To See Congress Flip Blue? Meet Kara Eastman

Lately the Republican Party has been slamming Democratic candidates for having been in bands in high school and college. Let's face it, the arts have never been a conservative thing. True, none of them attacked Sonny Bono for having been in Sonny and Cher before he became the congressman from Palm Springs but when it comes to Beto O'Rourke in Texas and Kara Eastman in Nebraska, you'd think they both had joined a terrorist group. Conservatives fear change and their fear young people.

Kara's communications director told me that Paul Ryan's SuperPAC has been spending loads of corporate money in her Omaha district trying to villainize her for her college performance band, Pieces of Fuck, although they somehow never seem to mention her other singing group, the All Americans. "We find it ironic that the opposition would want to attack Kara, and Beto, for doing something many American teens do-- join a band, sing songs about issues that matter to them, and express themselves through music. Congress would be a better place with more musicians, and while we were joking about a College Band Congressional Caucus, Kara is looking forward to working with politicians like Beto who lead with heart-- and music."

When Kara and I first met, Green Day came up. I had been the president of their record label and she was a fan and friend. Her husband's band, Horace Pinker, opened shows on a Green Day tour and Green Day stayed at their house after the first concert. "For me, Green Day will always be the band we watched play in small clubs all over the world," Kara told me. "How many people can say Tré Cool serenaded them in their apartment? Well, maybe a lot. The last time I saw them live, I paid $5 to get in. After that concert, I brought Billie Joe back to my friends' house and to this day they still can’t believe they met the lead singer of Green Day. We’ve all come a long way from those days. Now, they are busy playing sold-out arenas with their political anthems, and I am running for Congress."

"One thing," she continued, "we still have in common though: Green Day and I are not fans of the Trump administration. A verse from one of Green Day’s newest songs, "Troubled Times," says this:

What part of history we learned
When it's repeated
Some things will never overcome
If we don't seek it
The world stops turning
Paradise burning
So don't think twice
We live in troubled times

"And we do indeed, live in troubled times. We cannot continue passing environmental issues off to our children to deal with later. The time to deal with climate change is now. Working families need to be paid a living wage, so they no longer have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. They should be able to take sick leave when needed and have the time they need to bond with their babies after childbirth. Parents should not weigh the costs before seeking emergency care for their children, or skip preventative care because they can’t afford it. Prescription medications must be affordable. I’m not going to stop until I get into Congress and can work to ensure that we come out standing tall after these troubled times. There is so much work that needs to be done and you can help me accomplish these goals."

And... Blue America wants to help her get into Congress and help her accomplish these goals. We're hoping to raise some contributions for her campaign by giving away a super rare RIAA-cerified double platinum award plaque for the 1994 Green Day hit album Insomniac. Just contribute-- any amount-- to Kara's campaign on this page, or by tapping the thermometer on the right, and you'll be eligible for the random drawing. We'll pick one person at random. If you give $2,000 you get a chance to get the platinum award. If you give $27 or $10 you get the same chance to get the award. (Yes, we're Democrats, not Republicans; that's how we roll. In fact, if you don't have the cash to give and you want the plaque, just send a note to us at Blue America, P.O. Box 27201. Los Angeles, CA 90027 and you'll have the same chance as everyone else.) Many contributors want to know if their donation will help. There are no guarantees of course, but polling shows that the residents of NE-02, in Omaha and its suburbs, want a new congressmember representing them. The most recent forecast shows a very tight toss up with Kara slightly ahead of Trump rubber-stamp Don Bacon-- 50.7% to 49.3%. If Kara can continue to get her message out, she will win this one. We need your help-- whether you're a Green Day fan or not-- although, I should mention that Christmas is coming up and what a great present that plaque would make!

The official legalese FEC rules for the contest are here.